One of the most unheralded but perpetually popular chassis designations in General Motors alphabet soup was the “C” Body cars. We’ve recently seen the praise of the Electra 225 and DeVille (both in convertible form), but today we let the eldest sister bask in the light. And she was a looker all on her own.
Born in the 1941 model year, the Olds Ninety Eight was the eldest of the modern “C” body family. The DeVille was born as a special hardtop in 1949 and Electra was the baby in 1959. Initially there was a twin sister ship, the less well endowed Ninety Six with the Olds flathead straight six, but it didn’t survive infancy, departing the Oldsmobile line up for 1942.
By the mid 1950s the Ninety Eight was pretty much a junior Cadillac with more conservative styling. You could get the excellent and efficient (for the times) Rocket V8, the majority of options including the Hydra Matic automatic with perhaps similar to equal build quality for less money. It was a smart buy that on the average did swell business for Oldsmobile dealers.
The market niche it settled into by the mid 1950s was the position it stayed in through the rest of its long life. There’s debate on when the Ninety Eight truly hit its stride. For a good portion of the 1950s it’s hard at first glance to detect the difference from the more family/sport orientated Eighty Eights, a problem that would would persist through the 1962 model year. Among the less brand loyal buyer in the early 1960s, it was a serious problem as they looked for unique and distinctive touches if they were going to lay down $4,000 or more on a car. Those fickle buyers most likely defected to a Thunderbird, that fancy Ford fashion coupe that was priced dead center in Ninety Eight price territory.
The first step came in 1963. Compared with the same year Eighty Eights, the distinction that this was the high society Oldsmobile started to become more obvious. The Eighty Eight still played to the active PTA member crowd. The Eighty Eights even have a more athletic, forward leaning stance compared to the Ninety Eight. Two very jewel like “Cathedral” style tail lamps were hung out back of the Ninety Eight’s extra length, a sharp pants crease that set off a nice suit. I always thought this element, that was retained in variation on Ninety Eights til the end originated with borrowing a Cadillac cue. But the large singular lens didn’t appear at Cadillac until 1965.
And typical to General Motors styling trends, Oldsmobile retracted for one year before settling on this template. The C-Body Electra stole the sister’s earrings for a season. After fielding the first preview at the distinct full width “Buick Blob” that would grace every full sized Buick until 2006, the Electra fielded it’s own Cathedral tail lamps for 1964, before reverting to the “blob” for 1965.
It’s worth noting that the “Cathedral” tail lamp had been first seen at Chrysler in 1956, and used through 1959. However Oldsmobile didn’t use them to cap the exuberant plumage of forward look copycat cars. Much the opposite. The 1963-66 Ninety Eights most strongly follow the revolutionary 1961 Lincoln Continental design philosophy towards long lean lines. But the General Motors tendency to accessorize gives the ”little black dress” element of the Conti look a more accessible, less austere feel to the American buying public.
There are elements that make the Ninety Eight seem more athletic than perhaps was was intended. By 1964 there was a blurring between the Starfire and the Ninety Eight. The Ninety Eight Sport Coupe was in its second year, and offered the 345hp Starfire engine, and a console. All in a fender skirted Ninety Eight. And all that did was hasten the demise for the poor Starfire.
While we’re on the subject of performance, despite being besotted with one of the worst variants on the original Hydra Matic concept, any 1960s Oldsmobile Ninety Eight is an effortless performer in a straight line. Car Magazine tests normally pegged 0-60 times in the mid 9 second range and top speeds up and over 125 miles per hour.
1964 also marks the point that my father’s family started the sea change away from the brand loyalty to Fords to Oldsmobiles. My Uncle, freshly rejected from the California Highway Patrol, was working at Paddleford Olds in Palo Alto in the Parts Department. With knowledge of the Police Pursuit packages available for all Oldsmobiles he ordered a rather remarkable Super Eighty Eight. Most likely it had the Starfire 394, a very numerically low axle ratio and police shocks and springs. The family was nonetheless very impressed, and one by one, Oldsmobile purchases became the sign of true adulthood in my family.
The Super Eighty Eight made its debut in a family crisis in the fall of 1964. My Grandfather had been in a freak accident at the Gulf Oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. My Uncle sped from Palo Alto to Port Arthur in the remarkable for the time 40 hours to make it to my Grandfather, most of the time running 115mph through the high deserts of the Southwest.
Apparently the story of this magic Oldsmobile that could run day and night at triple digit speeds intrigued my grandfather more than his recovery, because he ordered the all-new for 1965 Ninety Eight Sedan before he knew if he’d be able to drive again. Gracing his purchase were the now legendary Turbo Hydra Matic and the first major revamp of the Oldsmobile Rocket V8 in sixteen years. Also those hips that saw the light of day over at Pontiac in 1962 came uptown to the C club.
Thankfully, Oldsmobile was one of the pioneers of making automobile usage accessible to the disabled. In the aftermath of World War II, Oldsmobile launched its Valiant program that made accommodations to disabled veterans purchasing new cars. 20 year later it meant that in most Oldsmobile Dealerships there were on the shelf kits to provide the cars with throttle controls on the steering wheel. And gave my Grandfather the chance to delight his grandchildren with smoky burn outs with his 365hp new Ninety Eight, a far cry from the 292 equipped 1959 Galaxie that was traded in.
And here is where I believe Oldsmobile in particular, and General Motors as a whole, was able to rest on their laurels. These word-of-mouth testimonials to the superiority of buying an Oldsmobile over a Chevrolet or even Pontiac came from those years. The blockbuster success of Oldsmobile in the 1970s through 1985 was based on the quality products it produced in the 1960s. The loyalty was based on redeeming qualities from some point in history.
Once considered sophisticated and stylish enough to be a prize for Miss America, for a variety of reasons Oldsmobile Ninety Eights ended up being a joke, most often undeservedly. The Oldsmobile Ninety Eight always remained what it meant to be, a stylish, quiet cruiser with “contemporary” style. It just lost the audience. It went from being your father’s car to becoming your grandfather’s car too soon. And the automotive landscape is all the more desolate without it.
Nice piece of writing sir. Well done. Sad that, with regards to the car itself, although I’m “only” 47, while the cars you refer are indeed special, I can not relate to the notion that an “Olds 98″ was a hip car. It has never meant anything more to me than a wallowing, underpowered barge for oldsters.
“the blockbuster success of Oldsmobile from the 1970′s to 1985 was based on the quality products it produced in the 1960′s”
I would say the success was based on the mass appeal Cutlass.
My opinion regarding Olds as a brand was why buy one when you could get a Buick?
Then post 1977 when engines where shared it was almost ridiculous to buy an Olds, or Buick expecting an Olds or Buick.
@ My opinion regarding Olds as a brand was why buy one when you could get a Buick?
I don’t think GM ever built a better engine than the Oldsmobile V8, except for maybe the Cadillac unit.
In my family in the 1960s, I think that the feeling was that Oldsmobile was a stylish middle class car. Buicks were stodgier and for richer people.
@jpcavanaugh
B-O-P-Cad engines were all cream of the crop for GM.
It’s a bit sad that the SBC became the “corporate” engine for GM when it’s big brothers were all around better powerplants.
Shit Box Chev was cheapest this is GM built down to a price, not up to a standard.
Why get an Olds when you could get a Buick?
Why not?
I can answer that coming from a family who had numerous Olds and Buick products through the years – Olds had the flair and somewhat more “oomph” than a similar or contemporary Buick.
Sure – in the ingrained (engrained?) minds of many GM folk through the years, the Buick was considered the “step up” from Olds, half a run down from Cadillac.
Driveability wise, Olds had more get up in performance and that was attributed to four speeds of tranny (although with a lurch at times on upshifts) vs. Dynaflow’s butter-smooth but high-slippage transmission.
I personally felt that, side by side, a 98 had more distinctive class than a contemporary Deuce-and-a-quarter. Electras didn’t have a posher sub-series like the 98 LS (until the 1970s Park Avenue – previous generations’ Limiteds aside).
Olds was just as much a professional’s car as was a Buick, if not more so.
I respect the nailheads, but a Rocket V-8 w/Hydra-Matic was a far better performer.
In fact, I had the best of BOTH worlds – Olds and Buick. My 1985 Buick LeSabre Collector’s Edition – Park Avenue style seats with an Olds 307!!
The buying public pretty much said, “Why not just buy a Buick” for close to two decades. Buick had some hard years in the mid-thirties, but I believe it outsold Oldsmobile every year between 1940 and 1958, when the recession and various tactical errors took a big cut out of Buick’s business. (During that period, Buick outsold Pontiac, too, except in 1948.)
Hydra-Matic was a lot more efficient than Dynaflow, but even with the latter, the mid-fifties Buick Century was a pretty hot performer for its time, not unlike the early Rocket 88. I doubt that had a lot to do with the sales disparity, though — I suspect it was more a testament to the power of brand snobbery.
caljn,
When I was growing up in the 1970s, Oldsmobile had a more youthful image, thanks to the original Toronado, the 442 and the various Hurst Oldsmobiles. Buick had a more conservative image…the muscle versions of the late 1960s and early 1970s Skylark, for example, really weren’t all that well known.
Buicks were more upscale, in the sense that, at Oldsmobile, the cars most identified with the brand were the Cutlass and Delta 88, while the Buicks most identified with the brand were the Electra and Riviera. Driving an Oldsmobile meant that you could afford to move beyond a Chevrolet, but driving a Buick meant that you were either this close to owning a Cadillac, or could afford one but chose not to, in order to present a more conservative image.
Yes, today I would agree with your assesment that Oldsmobile would fit into a more sport/luxury category while Buicks were conservative.
At the time, also growing up in the ’70s, I considered Olds another rung in the ladder from Chevy to Cadillac, a rung easily skipped.
Why get an Olds when you could get a Buick?
Different market…entirely different. As noted, Buicks were aimed at a wealthy crowd…a step down from Cadillac; but an achievement.
Olds…aimed at those who appreciated engineering. In contrast to DeLorean’s hotshoe Pontiac, Olds was a family car that was supposed to be well-designed for performance…not burnouts, but all-around performance and durability.
When Olds became a clone of the Upper Tier of GM, it lost its customers, who moved on to German or Japanese brands.
I too grew up in an Oldsmobile family, but we were all Cutlass and 88 people. 98s (I’m sorry, I meant “Ninety Eights”) were for rich people. However, we had one family friend who was a single man who was tight with a dollar. He always bought used Ninety Eight sedans and drove them for several years. I particularly remember a white 65 and a yellow 69 or 70. I think that the Ninety Eight still had some mojo through the 76 models. I always felt that with the 77s, it was much harder to tell the difference between the Ninety Eight and its less expensive little brother.
I have always had a soft spot for the 63 and 64 models, Roto-Hydramatic notwithstanding. It was an elegantly styled car that provided some luxury without the snob appeal of a Buick or a Cadillac. Also I like the 4 window 4 door (your red car) so much beter than the 6 window style.
A final note – the wheel covers on your red 64 are identical to those on my parents’ 64 Cutlass. Those fancy optional caps always made the car look so much nicer than the plainer ones that were on most of the others.
My grandparents had a 1965 Delta 88 – yellow with a tan interior. It was one of the first cars that I drove. I recall that it had a very large gas gauge next to the speedometer. It also had a chrome “rocket” on the dashboard next to the speedometer that glowed red when the high beams were on. I had a very hard time getting used to the fact that it had no outside rear view mirrors.
Thanks for a wonderful trip down memory lane; both yours and mine. I spent many childhood Saturdays comparison shopping GM’s big cars in 1963: I decided they were all very worthy. My allegiance lasted as long as the bike ride to the next dealer.
Was 1963 the best year ever for GM big car styling?
On the beautiful ’63 Impala and groundbreaking Riviera alone, yes it was a great year!
Was ’69 the best year for GM engines?
63 Holden EH was the best one they made as far as sales went they way it looked over the 62 helped no end. New motor instead of the gutless grey did the rest.
Another “aye” vote – 1963 was GM’s styling peak on big cars. If we did the whole line corporate average, I would have to go with 1964. The ’64 big cars were almost as pretty and the intermediates were lots better looking.
Was ’63 the pinnacle of styling?
I think it was. Unlike many, I liked the Chevrolet of that year…I remember, my old man had a new 1963 Impala as a company car. Those cars were to be kept 30 months; but he had transferred and the car had to be returned to that district. So he got a new 1964, which I thought was blocky and stodgy by comparison.
Obviously buyers didn’t agree, as for a time it looked like the 1964 was on its way to becoming a classic. They held the road for a long while, unlike the 1963s which seemed to quickly disappear.
The other GM 1963s were comparable. Our neighbor’s wife had a 1963 Olds Starfire convertable…she had four kids but still thought she was the homecoming queen; acted and tried to look it. Her car was stylish, anyway…
I’d have to say 1963, with 1961 and 1964 as a whole 2nd and 3rd. I keep on going back and forth about the 1965 GM corporate line: Some of the cars took well to the Curves and others didn’t.
I always thought for 1962 only Pontiac and Cadillac did the Mitchell encore season better than the 1961. But I don’t think the 1962 Chevy, Olds and Buick are ugly. But some of the details are strange, like the Chevy looking a bit too wide eyed, the Oldses having that weird double chin and the Buicks starting with the “blob” tail lights and what looks like receding gum headlamp bezels.
My favorite 60′s full-sized Olds is the 1968 Delta 88. It is round at the hips and tailored in the front, and nice mix of expressiveness and restraint. I prefer the rectangular lights of the rear of the 88 over the vertical lights of the Ninety Eight.
I like both, but the 88s are definitely sportier and more youthful.
In response to Paul’s comment above (which it won’t let me reply to directly for some reason) They were all fabulous, from Chevy all the way up to Cadillac. I agree that ’63 was one of the best years of the ’60s, at least, for GM big cars. They got everything just right. For Olds in particular, I think ’63 is a lot more successful than either ’62 (which looked a lot like Chevy) or ’64 (the 98 was too blunt-edged in the rear and lost all the crispness of ’63.)
Charlie,
The 1960s 98s were hardly underpowered! My Grandfather owned a 1969 98 with the high-compression 455 and boy would that car scoot. My favorite feature on the car was the “mist” wiper button hidden in the end of the shift lever.
He drove it daily until it burned to the ground at a rest stop in 1987 (I think the exhaust had a leak somewhere in the back that was shooting upward towards the floorboard, and got something underneath the rear seat so hot that it ignited, probably the tar-based soundproofing material). I seriously considered tracking down the vehicle to keep the engine/trans, but I was midway through college and had no time, money, or a vehicle to put it in.
98′s rule! Especially the LS – why buy a Cadillac, even a Fleetwood when you could have all the luxury . . . and sometimes more “go” than the Clark Street Caddies.
Go Lansing!
BTW . . . tradionally and repeatedly, the Lansing built cars, as a rule, had superior assembly quality to Flint and Detroit Clark Street products. I believe Oshawa, Ontario has that honor today.
My wife’s family was an Oldsmobile family, and of course at that time the vast majority of what they bought was Lansing built. I think until the very end, the Lansing plant had the best assembly quality.
I have a Chevy Cavalier that was sold near Youngstown, Ohio, but not built at the Lordstown plant, it came from Lansing, instead. 14 years and 250,000 miles later, we still marvel at well put together that car is, It will become my daughter’s daily driver soon, and I have no issues putting her in that car. It has always run well for us and shows no sign of giving up anytime soon.
I’ve thought in the back of my mind it was due to the fact that it came from Lansing.
This is in no way a knock on my friends and family who work at Lordstown. I have two Sunfires in my ‘fleet’, and they are both well assembled and run well too. My 1995 Sunfire GT has the Olds designed Quad 4 (balance shaft LD2) and runs like a little beast.
Ah, the 98′s. In ’59 my father bought a new Olds. Remember not really happy that it did not have real tail fins. Worst it was an 88 with convex tail lights where the 98 had concave lights with chrome inserts. Such class!
Worst was some where around ’62 the 98 had four oval tail lamps instead of two. By the time the 98′s where really different from the 88′s who really cared? Air, power steering & breaks. What more did you need?
I think that was the Ninety Eight’s dilemma all along, and the perceived added value was a lot of marketing, and more expensive upholstery. I don’t know if the extra 3 inches in wheelbase went to the interior to make them more roomy (well the 1965-69 cars seem roomier than the Eighty Eights). You also got the next most powerful Rocket V8 too.
But the real reason for buying one probably ended when the Rocket V8 was offered in the Eighty Eight 1949. But for some reason it picked up a different stride around these years that really culminated in the 1971 redesign and the big hoopla around the Regency model (with a set of keys from Tiffany’s!).
The ’59 had fabric of real woven nylon seats, hot in summer, cold in winter. Olive green too. There was plenty of space to sit six, but alas the bottom would scrap going up the smallest incine. Weekly shopping was crunch time. Do not know how many times he replace the muffler. When he went for the ’66 88 (paid $3,500 tic) the idea. Of the 98 was too abhorrant to consider. Father only gave up on GM after buying a Vega, (as well as Pontiac Sunbird, Caddy w/4/6/8 engine, then the diesel fiasco.
Mirrors and glass, the reel secret to GM ‘s success. And a lot of chrome.
Marketing and performance image reasons – re: 98′s engine being dropped in a lesser Olds – much like the early 50s Chryslers – New Yorker Hemi in a shorter Windsor-wheelbase car = Chrysler Saratoga 1st generation – a bomb!
Consider the 98s of the day the entry level “C’ body car (although between ’54 and ’58 98′s were demoted to dressed-up “B” body class).
Don’t forget the Ninety-Eight LS beginning in ’65 with the Fleetwood style touches. A budget towncar!
I dunno — bigger is better still had a lot of marketing appeal. As a case in point, in 1950, Buick introduced a strange dual-wheelbase approach for the Super and Roadmaster, with both a B-body and a C-body version of each. The big C-body Super was a huge hit, Buick’s best seller by a wide margin, and accounting for about one in five sales. It didn’t get you the big engine or Roadmaster appointments, but I gather people liked being able to say they drove a BIG Buick…
My father-in-law was a WWII vet and career Army, and following his retirement, he treated himself to a succession of Ninety-Eights. His loyalty to the car and to the dealer from whom he bought them was such that when he passed away, the dealer came to his funeral. Now, most of his generation, perhaps the most loyal to Olds, is gone, and so is Olds itself. The dealership, which became a joint Olds-Honda operation sometime in the ’70s or ’80s, is now a standalone Honda shop, which sold my wife her first car, a Civic.
Cfclark – strangely enough, it seems, at least in the west, most Pontiac/Olds franchises would up becoming Honda or Subaru dealers.
I was flabbergasted to see upon my last visit to Nashville this summer that Jim Reed Chevrolet/Subaru, which had been a Chevrolet dealer since I believe 1915 (and from which I bought my Subaru), had given up its Chevrolet franchise and is now Jim Reed Hyundai/Subaru. Sad to see, although probably pretty savvy on their part to join up with Hyundai. (The dealer across the street, which had diversified a while back but had always had Pontiac as its flagship, complete with a well-preserved “Indian Chief” neon sign, is now mainly a Toyota shop.)
1940, technically is the 98′s birth year – the “C” body Olds series 90 – Eight! (and as Laurence mentioned, the short lived series 90 – six!).
My grandmother owned a 1979 Ninety-Eight with the 403V8 I have many happy childhood memories (I was born in 1977) bombing around the back roads of Ohio with her, that old lady drove like a bat outta hell (but then again she was only in her 40s at the time.) She still tells the story about the time she left a singles bar (after her first husband died) driving the 98 loaded down with her girl-friends. She was going a little fast and an Ohio Highway Patrolman pulled her over. “Why are you going so fast?” he said.
My grandmother replied: “Well I just had the tires replaced, could my speedometer be off?”
The cop thought for a minute and said; “Yeah, I suppose so.” He let her off with a warning.
The minute the cop got back in his car my grandmother and her girlfriends almost wet themselves laughing.
Give me ANY year Oldsmobile 98, even a FWD one. Although if you gave me a FWD one I’d keep it and keep looking for a RWD one, preferably built before 1980.
Minor clarification about the Cadillac C-body: the De Ville was not technically a model in 1949; it wasn’t formally a model until 1959. Before that, the ‘default’ C-body Cadillac was the Series 62.
Starting in 1948, the Series 61, Series 62, and Fleetwood Sixty Special actually all shared the C-body, although the Sixty Special was stretched to justify its higher price. Before that, the Series 61 had been a B-body car, but when the first postwar designs were developed, there ended up not being time to do two separate shells, so GM introduced a new C-body that was about the size of the previous B-body. It was used in ’48 by Cadillac and the Olds Futuramic 98, and in 1949 for the Buick Super and Riviera.
The first Coupe de Ville, added in mid-1949, was technically a Series 62 model. It wasn’t a big part of Cadillac’s total sales picture for a few more years — Cadillac sold 2,150 of them in ’49 and about 4,500 in 1950, so it was still basically a low-volume image leader.
CC tugs at the heart, as always. I sure wish I still had more of my Olds (which came from Paddleford Olds in Palo Alto too!) than what the attached image shows …
Incidentally I’d say that the extra length in the 64 ’98 went into the trunk, which was really the most massive I’ve encountered. One moment of glory was driving to the airport to pick up a visiting string quartet from England. Naturally, all four passengers plus two violins, a viola, a cello and all their other bags were handled readily …